February 15, 1998
Experienced narrator George Guidall tells this Horatio Alger-meets-Walt Disney account of an ambitious young man living the American dream with spectacular bravado (LJ 4/15/96). Martin starts out as a bellhop in a modest hotel in turn-of-the-century Manhattan and ends up building lavish hotels that turn out to be theatrical extravaganzas. The author has vividly described it all in elegant prose, but for some reason he tends to stifle his characters. Instead of letting them talk for themselves, he talks about them. In fact, there is so little dialog that the liveliest character in the book is the city of New York. Guidall does his best to animate the inanimate text, but perhaps reading it aloud is not the best approach. Since Martin Dressler won Millhauser a Pulitzer Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award, it might make sense to enjoy the printed book and forget about the audio program. A marginal purchase.--Jo Carr, Sarasota, Fla.
Copyright 1998 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from April 1, 1996
Literature's romance with the building-as-metaphor earns new energy through Millhauser's latest novel (after Little Kingdoms, 1993), which quietly chronicles the life of an entrepreneur whose career peaks when he builds a fabulous hotel in turn-of-the-century Manhattan. Beginning with his first jobs-in his father's cigar shop and as a bellhop-young Martin's rise is fueled by a happy blend of pragmatism and imagination. Both inform the design of the cafes and hotels he builds as an adult, though the latter seems to gain sway in the construction of his magnum opus, the Grand Cosmo. Within the rusticated walls of that grand hotel, one floor's elevators open onto "a densely wooded countryside" dotted with cottages; another floor simulates a rugged mountainside, featuring "caves" furnished with beds, plumbing and "refrigerated air." For recreation, guests can wander in the artificial moonlight of the Pleasure Park or visit the Temple of Poesy, where young women in Green tunics will recite poetry, 24 hours a day. Such amenities speak of Dressler's view of the hotel as "a world within the world, rivaling the world." In deliberate contrast stands Millhauser's cooler evocation of his protagonist's private life. The magnate's genial sister-in-law works for him, while the troubles of his neurasthenic wife-"his sister's sister, his tense, languous, floating, ungraspable bride"-reflect his increasingly manic, untethered imaginings. Millhauser's characteristic fascination with the material artifacts of the vanished past-and the startling deftness with which he can describe the street, the carnival, the hotel that never existed-marks him as a cultural historian as well as an idiosyncratic fabulist. Taking its place alongside other fine tales of architectural symbology, from Poe to Borges to Ayn Rand, this enticing novel becomes at once the tale of a life, a marriage and a creative imagination in crisis.